War, being ultimately the expression of the mind's errors and the heart's passions, can only be stopped by getting at it in the places where it starts: in the mind and the heart themselves. Its cause being primarily internal it cannot be cured by an external remedy. This means that neither organized religion nor organized politics can save the world from the ruin that awaits it. We may wish them well in their attempts but we cannot help seeing facts which all history causes us to see. The guns and bombs, the gases and tanks of modern war are only the symbols of man's inner disorder. The reality behind them is his ignorance of spiritual laws, his blindness to the fact that all war is a consequence and not a cause. All the national days of prayer and the eminent ecclesiastics who led them have failed to stop two world wars in our time. And they failed because they were trying to escape from a consequence whilst leaving the cause untouched.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 3 : Their Presence in The World > # 159
